In accordance with the spread of broadband communication in these years, the event of reproducing video and audio through the Internet utilizing streaming technique is increasing. In the case where streaming data such as video and audio is distributed via the Internet, the streaming data is divided into a plurality of packets for distribution. The client uses his/her device such as a PC (Personal Computer) to take out the data from the received packets to reconstruct the data for reproduction.
On the Internet, the communication of various applications is present on one IP (Internet Protocol) network. Accordingly, there are cases where the communication speed is degraded when the network is crowded or the like. This will lead to disturbance in data reproduction in the communication where reception of a packet is required in real time such as in the case of streaming communication.
In this context, there is proposed the technique to monitor all the packets through a router to search for a streaming packet of video, audio and the like to carry out bandwidth control according to the identified packet.
For example, Patent Document 1 discloses a communication control apparatus (home router) provided at the interface of the WAN (Wide Area Network) side/LAN (Local Area Network) side, capable of bandwidth measurement, communication flow monitoring, bandwidth calculation and bandwidth control. The communication control apparatus ensures the QoS (Quality of Service) of the streaming communication for a television or the like connected in parallel.
Patent Document 2 discloses a streaming data communication system including a server for distributing streaming data, and a streaming data communication apparatus receiving streaming data. The streaming data communication apparatus determines the proper bit rate according to the test data packet transmitted from a server.
Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2005-210347
Patent Document 2: Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2005-167514